This song depicts the famous painting, Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh. Its lyrics beautifully describes the magnificent work of art, every detailed scratch of paint on the canvas expresses the tumult of the artist's emotions during his lifetime, possibly around the time when he was painting the Starry Night; a time of his life, which some people thought he was not in a state of sanity. He was locked in an asylum for a short period of time, just before the time of his death. His only confidante was his elder sister, to whom he addressed many correspondences which expressed his agony, his disagreements to the ways of the world. In the end, disillusioned by the world, Vincent committed suicide. Ironically, the artist's name was never recognized, nor his works of art appreciated, in the slightest, until after his death.

Sometimes, I can't help thinking, how it would have felt being Vincent. Being misunderstood all his life, ignored by most people, disregarded and mocked at, which eventually lead him to despair. The world can often be a place of disillusionment. Reality sucks big time, and people are just either too stupid to be bothered about others, or too lazy to recognize truth and put themselves in other people’s shoes. They keep ranting on and on about what they themselves believe, things that justify themselves. Things such as why they are right, why their religion is the most righteous, why others cannot reach enlightenment, or even such audacity as to judge people’s right to enter heaven by presenting their own formula.

Sometimes I thought I could feel what Vincent would have felt at that time. Sad, disillusioned, and misunderstood. And if I were there, perhaps I would also have told Vincent, that the world was never meant for one as beautiful as him…

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Yesterday I overheard a bunch of Indonesians in the MRT discussing about an instant noodle advertisement. It’s an Indomie ad, one of our local established brands, one of my favourite. They were talking about how the brand had made its way to Singapore, and were impressed by the variety of new flavours it offered, flavours which we can’t even find in our own country, where the brand originally came from. Then they decided that it’s definitely worth a try.

Discussions aside, my inner geek mind started to whisper its usual philosophical ideas. Imagine a packet of instant noodles. It contains the noodles (of course) and a small packet of seasoning (or in some cases, plus, an even smaller packet of oil to add flavour).

Let’s start with the noodles. This main ingredient for instant noodles are made of flour. Plain flour. Yup, nothing else, simple as it may seem. This flour is then fried to make it crispy and dry, as well as to preserve it, enabling a very long shelf life for sale in even the remotest mini marts which almost nobody would buy things from, and yet always managed to sell off most of them instant noodles. Next, the seasoning: nothing but salt and pepper, and some artificial flavourings. In more advanced types, they will have a pathetically small sized packet of vegetable oil and dried veggies/fried onions. All packed within not more than a 20 x 25 cm sized pastic packet.

And the result? Deliciously flavoured instant noodle, enough to cause people to crave for it. The basic ingredient may be so simple, but hey, it doesn’t taste that simple at all! You can get a wide array of different flavours, from onion broth, duck noodles, to kimchi ramen. You name it, they’ve got it! In fact, some people can deceive themselves to eat certain authentic flavours of instant noodles to overcome their longing for dishes from their hometowns (me included).

Let’s go further with our analysis. Imagine, such a simple packet of flour with an attached small packet of salt anf pepper inside, results in a delicacy with so many different varieties. Such is the thing with humans. Get a simple person. Just a plain person, plain face, with unimpressive intellect and wisdom. Adorn him or her with stones dug up from the soil, apply colorful dirt on their faces and skin, and you can get a variety of so-called “beauty” looks. Put nonsensical sweet words into their mouth, and top it up with pretty lies and spicy gossips, and they call it a socially intellectual person. Vanity.

As a plain flour noodle can produce a pleasant delicacy when dressed up with simple flavoured chemicals, a plain person can appear as a goddess when the right amount and composition of nonsense is used to cover them up. Nowadays, it’s hard to differentiate people with a genuine heart from those wearing nonsense as a cover. True beauty and wisdom is harder and harder to find, thanks to vanity which men have created and adopted as their way of life.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment